Fly fishing requires quite complex functional features from a reel, especially an easy pay-out of line for preparing a casting, an instant but softly ongoing drag increase to stop a sudden fish run, a comfortable dynamic adjustment of the drag when fighting the fish depending on the strategy desired by the angler, when necessary by applying a maximum drag load, an easy switching between this passive braking mode and a mode of winding line in, and all this while having the permanent security that the load on the line will never exceed the line breaking strength. It is even better, if in addition the reel has an easy handling, i.e. it is light enough, but stable, has relatively simple construction for easy disassembling for maintenance and assembling, and the spool is easily exchangeable without using a tool.
Presently available fly reels are able to satisfy the above requirements only to a more or less limited extend. Many attempts to improve the function and handling comfort of fly reels are known to exist from prior art publications including: U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,269,808; 3,478,977; 3,490,714; 3,697,012; 4,352,474; 4,544,114; 4,715,555, 4,728,054; 5,626,303; 5,921,492; 6,095,311; 6,193,182 and 6,513,743 B1.
Direct-drive reels, where the crank knob is mounted directly on the spool are usually provided with a drag setting knob, which in its best version is conveniently accessible from the crank knob's front side of the reel, as shown for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,921,492. When using this kind of reels, a relatively light drag is preset by the drag knob. If additional drag is necessary for fighting the fish, the angler might try to re-adjust the drag knob which however, because of the fast rotating spool and crank knob is less appropriate than palming the reel spool. For bigger species this exercise requires the use of a glove on the line hand. When the fish surges away, the hand should be instantly removed in order to avoid a line break. A switching from this palming operation mode to a mode of winding line in requires that the palming hand becomes again winding hand, wherein if the fish surges again, the crank holding fingers have to instantly slip from the crank so as to avoid either an injury or a line brake, or both. The last one was mainly the reason for occasionally calling direct-drive reels “knuckle busters” and thus, for developing anti-reverse reels.
In an anti-reverse reel, the crank is attached to a separate handle which is coupled to the spool by the drag friction for winding in line, but remains stationary during a backward rotation of the spool against the preset drag force. Thus, the use of such reel requires, that after having striped line from the spool against a lightly set drag for preparing a cast, the drag knob has to be tightened to relatively high drag force sufficient to avoid that, when fighting a fish it stripes line from the spool while the angler winds in. In practice the re-tightening of the drag happens mostly on-purpose when fighting a fish, which is a tricky exercise considering the fact, that drag knobs or wheels are usually arranged behind the handle and close to the rotating front spool wall and thus, difficult to approach and operate. U.S. Pat. No. 4,352,474 describes an anti-reverse fly reel the drag force of which can be adjusted by means of an adjuster knob arranged behind the crank knob. Such an adjustment is useful for providing a pre-set drag. However, since it requires a hand move being different from that natural one for winding in line, it is difficult to use this drag system also for a dynamic drag adjustment under fish fighting conditions. The same drawback is typical for another known modification of such reel where the drag force can be dynamically altered by squeezing the crank knob. Another U.S. Pat. No. 6,513,743 B1 relates to an anti-reverse fly reel having a knurled drag adjustment knob on the back side thereof. Adjacent to the drag knob, there is provided a drag offset mechanism for altering the drag preset by the drag knob between a light drag and a heavy drag. Besides being complicated, this reel requires the angler to re-open and re-tighten—in this case the drag offset mechanism—every time he changes between the light drag position for paying out line from the spool and a heavy drag position for a ready-to-fight mode. Since both the drag knob and the offset mechanism are located on the backside of the reel, they are useful in the practice only as drag preset means, whereas a dynamically controllable drag change is difficult to perform.
Because of the above mentioned drawbacks, so called dual-mode reels have been known for more than sixty years, as for example from the U.S. Pat. No. 2,269,808. The reel described in this patent actually represents an anti-reverse reel, where a basic drag force can be preset by a propeller wheel arranged behind the handle. In parallel to the propeller wheel, there is provided an additional drag control device which when actuated by the handle in reel-in direction causes a tightening of the drag mechanism over the preset drag. This is accomplished by a screw connection between the handle and a drag pressing element, so that a winding rotation of the handle causes an infinite drag tightening until a direct-drive mode, i.e. a mode in which the handle is fixedly coupled to the spool for winding in line, is achieved. Therefore, the handle torque necessary for winding in a fighting fish causes a tremendous drag increase beyond the strength of the strongest line, and even more far away from the value actually necessary in order to frictionally couple the handle with the spool. Thus, if the fish bolts during winding in line while unavoidably causing a tension beyond the line's breaking strength, the angler's chances to avoid a line break are even less than with an ordinary direct-drive reel, where a quick slip of the fingers from the crank knob could be a remedy.
The dynamic drag control by the reel handle has been occasionally re-designed over the years, however without any principal change of its principle. In the U.S. Pat. No. 5,626,303 there is disclosed substantially the same dynamic drag control providing an unlimited drag increase. The U.S. Pat. No. 6,095,311 describes a reel having a dynamic drag control using instead of a screw coupling between the handle and a drag pressing element relatively short and steep cam surfaces which require much smaller rotation angle of the handle in order to quickly switch from the anti-reverse into the direct-drive mode. Although this alleviates to some extent the problem of escaping from the direct drive mode in case of a sudden fish run on the one side, it makes a sensible dynamic drag control over a reasonable rotation angle of the handle difficult on the other side. Thus, fighting a fish with this reel requires either the well known palming of the spool or a parallel drag force setting by its drag wheel which—because being hidden behind the handle—is difficult to approach and operate. Last but not least, the reel requires the use of particular steering plates provided with a plurality of tiny accommodating cam channels having changing cross-sections with a plurality of tiny balls revolving in these channels.